The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketingwas published in 2001. I’ve been compiling a list of the new media that have emerged since then. There are about 20-30 new categories of media (depending upon how you slice and dice the categories , with several major players in each category — hundreds of choices! Totally overwhelming for the marketer. As I was researching the list I’ve become increasingly amazed by how many there are, and how widespread their use is.

But this one rocked me back and almost knocked me out of my chair. I was installing Sharaholic plug-in into my Firefox browser. As I was doing so, I came to the place where they asked me to indicate which Social Media Services I used, and I was confronted with the following set of choices, which was astounding in itself. But what rocked me back was how many of them I use (21!) — coupled with how many I don’t even know much, if anything, about (I admit it: 48).

Now I’m an expert in the new media and Word-of-Mouth Marketing. I stay pretty current. Yet, there were 48 I don’t know very much about. And 21 that I use. But I don’t use them smoothly. I have trouble managing them, and knowing which is best for what, when 2 or more can overlap in capabilities. I’d say I’m in the upper 1% in the 50+ crowd in this area, and I’m overloaded, confused, inefficient.

So, here’s my point: Imagine how the rest of the world feels? There are enormous opportunities not only in new capabilities (where everyone’s looking right now), but in simplifying, integrating, educating and making the whole area much easier and much more useful to people who aren’t kids and have some real work to do.